Our Lady of the Flowers Page 18

  “Stop that, Sonia,” he said.

  Perhaps he had a cigarette in his mouth. She continued stuffing her valise with silk stockings, dresses, pajamas, towels.

  “Stop it, Sonia.”

  She stuffed away. The valise was lying on the bed. Clément pushed her on to it. She lost her balance, and as she fell back, her feet, which were still wearing silver shoes, flew up to his nose. The girl uttered a tiny cry. The Negro grabbed her by the ankles, and, lifting her up like a tailor's dummy, with a dazzling gesture, a sunlike gesture, swinging rapidly on his heel, he broke her head on the post of the little brass bed. Clément told me the story in his soft Creole speech, in which the r's are dropped and the ends of phrases are drawled out softly.

  “You und'stand, Missie Jean. Ah hit huh head theah. Huh head theah smacked on the brass bed.”

  He was holding in his fingers a little soldier whose symmetrical face expressed only foolishness and caused that feeling of malaise which we also get from primitive drawings, from the same drawings that prisoners carve on prison walls and scribble in library books, and on their chests which they are going to tattoo, and which show the profiles with an eye in full-face. Clément finally told me of the anguish into which he had been thrown by the rest of the episode: the sun, he said, was coming through the window of the little apartment, and never before had he noticed a certain quality of the sun, namely, malevolence. It was the only living thing. It was more than an accessory–it was a triumphal, insidious witness, important as a witness (witnesses are almost always for the prosecution), jealous as actors at not having top billing. Clément opened the window, but then it seemed to him that he had just publicly confessed his crime; the street came crowding into the room, upsetting the order and disorder of the drama so that it could take part in it too. The fabulous atmosphere lasted quite a while. The Negro leaned out the window; at the far end of the street he saw the sea. I do not know whether, in attempting to reconstitute the state of mind of the criminal who surmounts the disastrous horror of his act, I am not secretly trying to ascertain what the best method will be (the one most in keeping with my nature) in order not to succumb likewise to horror when the time comes. Then, all the possible ways of getting rid of Sonia occurred to him at once, grouped, interlaced, crowding each other, offering themselves to his choice as on a street stand. He did not remember ever having heard about walling up a corpse, and yet this was the means he felt had been singled out before he chose it.

  “So Ah locked the do’. Ah put key in m'pocket. Ah took the valise f'm off the bed, ah pulled back the blankets. Ah put Sonia in bed. Funny thing, Missie Jean, held Sonia theah. Blood stuck on huh cheek.”

  And then there began that long life of heroism which lasted an entire day. By a powerful effort of will, he escaped banality–maintaining his mind in a superhuman region, where he was a god, creating at one stroke a private universe where his acts escaped moral control. He sublimated himself. He made himself general, priest, sacrificer, officiant. He had commanded, avenged, sacrificed, offered. He had not killed Sonia. With a baffling instinct, he made use of this artifice to justify his act. Men endowed with a wild imagination should have, in addition, the great poetic faculty of denying our universe and its values so that they may act upon it with sovereign ease. Like someone who overcomes his fear of water and the void which he is about to enter for the. first time, he breathed deeply, and, bringing himself to a point of icy determination, he became insensible and remote. Having gone through with the irremediable, he resigned himself to it and came to terms with it. Then he tackled the remediable. As of a cloak, he divested himself of his Christian soul. He sanctified his acts with a grace that owed nothing to a God Who condemns murder. He stopped up the eyes of his spirit. For a whole day, as if automatically, his body was at the mercy of orders that did not come from here below. It was not so much the horror of the murder that terrified him: he was afraid of the corpse. The white corpse disconcerted him, whereas a black corpse would have disturbed him less. So, he left the apartment, which he locked with extreme care, and went off at daybreak to a construction yard to get twenty pounds of cement. Twenty pounds was enough. In a distant neighborhood, around the Boulevard Sebastopol, he bought a trowel. In the street, he had regained his man's soul; he acted like a man, giving his activity a commonplace meaning: that of making a little wall. He bought fifty bricks and had them hauled to a street near his own, where they were left in a hired wheelbarrow. It was already noon. Getting the bricks into the apartment was quite a job. He made ten trips from the wheelbarrow to his home, carrying five or six each time and concealing them under a coat that he carried on his arm. And when all the materials were ready in the room, he returned to his empyrean. He uncovered the corpse; then he was alone. He set the body against the wall, near the fireplace. His plan was to immure it standing up, but it had already curled; he tried to straighten the legs, but they had the hardness of wood and had assumed their final form. The bones snapped like a bunch of firecrackers. So he left it squatting there at the foot of the wall, and he set to work. Works of genius owe a great deal to the collaboration of circumstances and workman. When his job was done, Clément saw that he had given it, with marvelous exactness, the form of a bench. That suited him. He worked like a sleepwalker, preoccupied and determined; he refused to see the gulf in order to escape from dizzying madness, the same dizziness which, later, a hundred pages later, Our Lady of the Flowers did not resist. He knew that if he flinched, that is, if he relaxed that attitude, an attitude as severe as a bar of steel, he would have sunk. Sunk, that is, run to the police station and melted into tears. He understood this and kept repeating it to himself as he worked, mixing exhortations with invocations. As he told the tale, the little lead soldiers ran rapidly between his big light fingers. I paid close attention. Clément was handsome. You know from Paris-Soir that he was killed during the jailbreak at Cayenne. But he was handsome. He was perhaps the handsomest Negro I have ever seen. How lovingly I shall caress, with the memory of him, the image I shall compose, thanks to it, of Seck Gorgui. I want him too to be handsome, nervous, and vulgar. Perhaps his destiny heightened his beauty, like those silly songs to which I listen here in the evening and which grow poignant because they reach me across cells and cells of guilty convicts. His faraway birth, his dancing at night, his crime, were elements which enveloped him in poetry. His forehead, as I have said, was round and smooth; he had laughing eyes, with long curved lashes. He was gentle and proud. In a eunuch's voice, he would hum old songs of the islands. Finally the police got him, though I don't know how.

  The little soldiers continued their work of invasion, and one day the foreman brought the soldier that was one too many. Village whimpered to me:

  “Ah've had enough, Missie Jean. Look, anotha so'dja.”

  From that day on, he grew more taciturn. I knew that he hated me, though without my being able to understand why and also without our comradely relations suffering thereby. He began, however, to manifest his hatred and irritation by all kinds of acts of petty meanness, about which I could do nothing, for he was invulnerable. One morning, after waking up, he sat down on his bed, looked around the room, and saw it full of stupid-looking figurines that were lying about everywhere, as mindless and mocking as a race of fetuses, as Chinese torturers. The troops rose up in sickening waves to attack the giant. He felt himself capsizing. He was sinking into an absurd sea, and the eddies of his despair were sucking me into the shipwreck. I grabbed hold of a soldier. They were all over the floor, everywhere, a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand! And though I was holding the one I had picked up in the warm hollow of my palm, it remained icy, without breath. There was blue everywhere in the room, blue mud in a pot, blue spots on the walls, on my nails. Blue as the apron of the Immaculate Conception, blue as enamels, blue as a standard. The little soldiers whipped up a swell that made the room pitch.

  “Jes’ look at me.”

  Clément was sitting on the bed and uttering sharp little cri
es. His long arms would rise and drop heavily on his knees (women carry on like that). He was weeping. His lovely eyes were swollen with tears that ran down to his mouth. “Oh! Oh!” But I, here, all alone, remember only the elastic muscle he dug into me without using his hand. I remember that live tool to which I would like to raise a temple. Others were taken by it. And Divine by Seck Gorgui, and others by Diop, by N'golo, by Smaïl, by Diagne.

  With Gorgui, Divine was very quickly all at sea. He played with her like a cat with a mouse. He was ferocious.

  As she lies with her cheek on his black chest (her wig is on firmly), Divine thinks about that tongue of his which is so strong while hers is so soft. Everything about Divine is soft. Softness or firmness is only a matter of tissues in which the blood is more or less abundant, and Divine is not anemic. Divine is she-who-is-soft. That is, whose character is soft, whose cheeks are soft, whose tongue is soft, whose tool is supple. With Gorgui, all is hard. Divine is amazed that there can be any relationship among these various soft things. Since hardness is equivalent to virility . . . If Gorgui had only one hard thing . . . and since it is a matter of tissue. The explanation eludes Divine, who has stopped thinking anything except: ‘'I'm the Quite-Soft.”

  So Gorgui lived in the garret, flying over the rows of graves, the columns of tombs. He brought his linen, guitar, and saxophone. He would spend hours playing homely melodies from memory. At the window, the cypresses were attentive. Divine felt no special tenderness toward him. She prepared his tea without love, but as her savings were running out, she went back to working the streets, and that kept her from being bored. She would sing. To her lips came unformed melodies in which tenderness blended with pompousness, as in primitive songs which are the only kind that can stir emotion, as do certain orisons and psalms, as do sober and solemn attitudes dictated by a code of primitive liturgy from which pure and blaspheming laughter is banished, although they are still all soiled with the desires of the divinities: Blood, Fear, Love. Darling used to drink inexpensive pernods, but Gorgui drinks cocktails composed of costly liquors; on the other hand, he eats little. One morning, it might have been eight o'clock, Our Lady knocked at the door of the garret. Divine was curled up in the shadow (as fragrant perhaps as a savanna) of the Negro who was sleeping candidly on his back. The knocking awoke her. We know that for some time she had been wearing pajamas at night. Gorgui continued napping. She crawled over his hot naked belly, hitting against his moist but firm thighs as she climbed over him, and asked:

  “Who is it?”

  “It's me.”

  “But who?”

  “Oh, shit! Don't you recognize me? Let me in, Divine.”

  She opened the door. The odor, even more than the sight of the Negro, informed Our Lady.

  “What a stink! You got a tenant. Not bad. Say, I've got to get some sleep. I'm pooped. Got room for me?”

  Gorgui had awakened. He was embarrassed at finding himself with a hard-on, the kind one has in the morning. He was naturally modest, but the whites had taught him immodesty, and in his zeal to be like them, he outdid them. Fearing lest his gesture seem ridiculous, he did not draw back the covers. He simply offered his hand to Our Lady, whom he did not know. Divine introduced them.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “All right.”

  Our Lady was sitting on the bed. He was getting used to the odor. While Divine prepared the tea, he unlaced his shoes. The laces were knotted. One might think that he put his shoes on and took them off without any light. He took off his jacket and tossed it on the rug. The water was about to boil. He tried to take off his shoes and socks with the same movement, for his feet were sweating and he was afraid they might smell in the room. He didn't quite manage it, but his feet didn't smell. He refrained from glancing at the Negro, and he thought: “Am I going to have to snooze next to Snow-ball? I hope he's going to beat it.” Divine was not very sure about Gorgui. She did not know whether or not he was one of the many stool pigeons of the vice squad. She did not question Our Lady. All in all, Our Lady was his usual self. Neither his eyes nor the corners of his mouth were tired; only his hair was a little mussed. A few strands over his eyes. All the same, a bit of a hangover look. He was waiting on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees and was scratching his head.

  “Your water cooking?”

  “Yes, it's boiling.”

  On the little electric stove the water was boiling away. Divine poured it over the tea. She prepared three cups. Gorgui had sat up. He was being gradually impregnated with objects and beings, and first of all with himself. He felt himself being. He emitted a few timid ideas: heat, an unfamiliar fellow, I got a hard-on, tea, spots on his nails (the face of the American girl who did not want to shake hands with one of his friends), ten after eight. He did not remember Divine's having spoken to him about this unfamiliar fellow. Whenever she introduces him, Divine says: “A friend,” for the murderer has strongly advised her never to call him Our Lady of the Flowers in front of a stranger. As things turn out, this has no importance. Gorgui looks at him again. He sees his slightly turned profile and the back of his head. It's the very same head that's pinned to the wall with a safety pin. But he looks better in the flesh, and Our Lady, turning slightly toward him, says:

  “Say, pal, going to make room for me? I didn't sleep a wink all night.”

  “Oh! go right ahead, my boy. I'm getting up.”

  We know that Our Lady never excused himself. It seemed, not that everything was due him, but that everything was bound to happen (and happened in due course), nothing was addressed to him, no special attention, no mark of esteem, that, in short, everything occurred according to an order with only one possibility.

  “Say, Divine, will you hand me my shirt?” said the Negro.

  “Wait, you're going to have tea.”

  Divine handed one cup to him and one to Our Lady. So once again begins the three-cornered life in the garret which looks out over the dead, the cut flowers, the drunken gravediggers, the sly ghost torn by the sun. Ghosts are composed of neither smoke nor opaque or translucent fluid; they are as clear as air. We pass through them during the day, particularly during the day. Sometimes they are outlined in pen strokes on our features, on one of our legs, crossing their thighs on ours, in one of our gestures. Divine spent several days with the airy Marchetti who ran off with Our Lady, and led him astray–and almost murdered him–and whose ghost Our Lady did not always pass through without carrying off in his movement sparkling shreds, invisible to Darling and his great friend (perhaps he wanted to say “my good pal” and one day he said “my pretty pal"). He takes a cigarette. But it is Marchetti who, with a roguish flick, shoots it from the pack. Shreds of the Marchetti ghost cling all over Our Lady. They disguise him beyond recognition. These ghostly tatters do not become him. He really looks disguised, but only like poor little peasant lads at Carnival time, with petticoats, shawls, wristlets, button boots with Louis XV heels, sunbonnets, fichus stolen from the closets of grandmothers and sisters. Little by little, petal by petal, Our Lady of the Flowers plucks off his adventure. True or false? Both. With Marchetti, he robbed a safe that was hidden in an antique cabinet. As he cut the electric wire connecting it with a bell in the watchman's quarters, Marchetti (a thirty-year-old, handsome blond Corsican, a Greco-Roman wrestling champion) put a finger to his lips and said:

  “Now it's quiet.”

  Squatting, probably on a rug, they sought the number and found it after having entangled themselves to the point of despair in combinations which jumbled up their age, their hair, the smooth faces of their love, with multiples and sub-multiples. Finally, this diabolic tangle was organized into a rosette and the door of the cabinet opened. They pocketed three hundred thousand francs and a treasure in fake jewels. In the car, on the way to Marseilles (for even if one isn't thinking of leaving, after that kind of job, one always goes to a port. Ports are at the end of the world), Marchetti, for no other reason than nervousness, struck Our Lady on the temp
le. His gold signet ring drew blood. Finally (Our Lady learned of it later, through Marchetti's confessing it to a pal), Marchetti thought of bumping him off. In Marseilles, after dividing the swag, Our Lady entrusted him with all of it, and Marchetti beat it, abandoning the child.

  “He's a son of a bitch, Divine, ain't he?”

  “You were crazy about him,” said Divine.

  “Aw, go on, you're nuts.”

  But Marchetti was handsome. (Our Lady talks about the sweater that shows his figure, like velvet. He feels that it envelops the charm that subjugates, the iron hand in the velvet glove.) Blond Corsican with eyes . . . of blue. The wrestling was . . . Greco-Roman. The signet ring . . . of gold. On Our Lady's temple, the blood flowed. In short, he owed his life to· the one who, having just murdered him, resurrected him. Marchetti, by his grace, restored him to the world. Then, in the garret, Our Lady became sad and joyous. One might think he was singing a song of death to the air of a minuet. Divine listens. He is saying that, if caught, Marchetti will be transported. He will be shipped off. Our Lady does not exactly know what transportation is, for all he has ever heard of it is what a youngster once said to him, in speaking of the courts: “Transportation's a rough deal,” but he suspects that it will be frightful. For Divine, who is familiar with prisons and their pensive hosts, Marchetti is going to prepare himself in accordance with the rites, as she explains to Our Lady, perhaps as was done by a man condemned to death who in one night, from twilight to dawn, sang all the songs he knew. Marchetti will sing songs with the voice of Tino Rossi. He will pack up. Will pick the photos of his prettiest girl friends. Also his mother's. Will kiss his mother in the visitor's room. Will leave. Afterwards, it will be the sea, that is, the devil's isle, Negroes, rum distilleries, coconuts, colonials wearing Panamas. The Beauty! Marchetti will play the Beauty! He will be the Beauty! I am touched at the thought of it and could weep with tenderness over his handsome muscles, submissive to the muscles of other brutes. The pimp, the lady killer, the hangman of hearts, will be queen of the labor gang. Of what use will his Greek muscles be? And he will be called “Flash” until a younger hoodlum arrives. But no. And does God take pity on him? A decree no longer allows the departure for Cayenne. The hardened offenders remain to the end of their days in the huge state prisons. The Beauty's chance, his hope, has been abolished. They will die nostalgic for the homeland that is their true homeland, which they have never seen, and which is denied them. He is thirty. Marchetti will remain between four white walls to the end of ends, and so as not to waste away with boredom, it will be his turn to elaborate these imaginary lives, never realized and without hope of ever being realized. It will be the death of Hope. Well-to-do captives of a dice-shaped cell. I am very glad of it. Let this arrogant and handsome pimp in turn know the torments reserved for the weakly. We occupy our minds with giving ourselves splendid roles through luxurious lives; we invent so many that we remain enfeebled for a life of action, and if one of them came, by chance, to be realized, we would be unable to be happy in it, for we have exhausted the dry delights (and many a time recalled the memory of their illusion) of the thousand possibilities of glory and wealth. We are blasé. We are forty, fifty, sixty years old; we know only petty, vegetative misery, we are blasé. Your turn, Marchetti. Don't invent ways of making a fortune, don't buy knowledge of a sure way of smuggling, don't look for a new trick (they're all used up, more than used up) to fool jewelers, to rob whores, to bamboozle priests, to distribute phony identity cards, for if you don't have the heart to try to escape, resign yourself to the possibility of suddenly getting the right break (without specifying to yourself exactly what it may be): the one that gets you out of trouble forever, and enjoy it as you can, deep in your cell. For I hate you lovingly.